The scanned portion of the UN Panel of Experts report on Sri Lanka war crimes leaked, presumptively by the government, to The Island newspaper has been obtained by Inner City Press and is being put online here.

It shows that the Panel's three members signed off on the report on March 31, 2011. Why was it only on April 12 that it was handed to Ban Ki-moon, who on April 13 gave it to Sri Lankan Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN General Shavendra Silva?

Inner City Press spoke both with Silva and with Permanent Representative Palitha Kohona on the evening of April 19, arriving uninvited at a reception at Kohona's residence. Despite statements by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesmen that the report would be released, Kohona argued that it should not be made available to the public.

Kohona emphasized, as it seems his government did to Ban Ki-moon, that because April 13 onward was a holiday in Sri Lanka, the UN should not release the full report. Kohona said that Monday was a lunar holiday, and the UN could not release the report - giving a new meaning to Ban Ki-MOON.

Those days were used to leak portions of the report to The Island newspaper, with President Mahinda Rajapaksa calling for mass protests against the UN report on May 1.

At Kohona's reception, the Permanent Representative of Egypt - Maged Abdelaziz, the same one as under Hosni Mubarak - arrived and chatted with Silva and Kohona, Egypt, as head of the Non Aligned Movement, pressured Ban Ki-moon against any real investigation of war crimes in Sri Lanka.

Abdelaziz left early, as did Inner City Press. Silva said he had two other events to attend - part of a campaign about and against the Panel of Experts report.

AUnited Nations panel investigating alleged war crimes in the Sri Lankan conflict has found credible evidence that the military shelled civilians in no-fire zones and sought to silence critics in brutal fashion, according to the panel's report, leaked to a Sri Lankan newspaper.

The report contradicts claims by the Sri Lankan government that it adopted a policy of "zero civilian casualties" in the final stages of its bloody 25-year battle with the Tamil rebels.

"The government shelled on a large scale in three consecutive no-fire zones, where it had encouraged the civilian population to concentrate, even after indicating that it would cease the use of heavy weapons," according to the report, published last week on the website of the newspaper, The Island.

"It shelled the United Nations hub, food distribution lines and near the International Committee of the Red Cross ships that were coming to pick up the wounded and their relatives from the beaches. It shelled in spite of its knowledge of the impact. ... Most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war were caused by government shelling."

The Sri Lankan government denounced the report as "fundamentally flawed."

A statement from the Ministry of External Affairs said that "among other deficiencies, the report is based on patently biased material, which is presented without any verification."

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said he will turn a planned May Day rally into a protest against the United Nations.

U.N. officials would not comment on the leaked report, but spokesman Farhan Haq said the published portions are accurate.

"They are incomplete, they're certainly not the full report, but they are accurate renditions of things that appear in the text," he said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed the three-member panel last year to advise him on accountability issues relating to alleged human rights violations during the final stages of the Sri Lankan war, which ended in May 2009.

The panel found both sides accountable for serious war crimes.

The report says the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who fought fiercely to secure an independent state for minority Tamils, "refused civilians permission to leave, using them as hostages, at times even using their presence as a strategic human buffer between themselves and the advancing Sri Lanka army.

"All of this was done in a quest to pursue a war that was clearly lost; many civilians were sacrificed on the altar of the LTTE cause and its efforts to preserve its senior leadership," the report says.

The government, the report says, "systematically shelled hospitals on the frontlines."

It also "systematically deprived people in the conflict zone of humanitarian aid, in the form of food and medical supplies, particularly surgical supplies, adding to their suffering. To this end, it purposely underestimated the number of civilians who remained in the conflict zone. Tens of thousands lost their lives from January to May 2009, many of whom died anonymously in the carnage of the final few days."

The report also is critical of government soldiers' screening of civilians in their hunt for rebels. Sometimes, it says, those who were singled out as suspects were summarily executed.

"If proven, those most responsible, including Sri Lanka Army commanders and senior government officials, as well as military and civilian LTTE leaders, would bear criminal liability for international crimes," the report says.

Sri Lanka's long and bloody conflict devastated nearly two-thirds of the population in its northern and eastern provinces. As many as 70,000 people were killed.

Following allegations of war crimes against the Sri Lankan government, a top human rights expert has said that India needs to make public its position on the issue.

"India will have to take a public position," Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch, told PTI. Ganguly added that if India wanted to emerge as a leader on the global stage then the country's leadership would have to show its intention of "protecting the rights of people over government."

An independent panel of experts, which submitted its report to the UN, has found "credible allegations" of crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Sri Lankan government and the rebel Tamil Tigers.

The excerpts leaked to Sri Lanka's 'Island' newspaper, said that "the panel found credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that a wide range of serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law were committed both by the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity".

The Sri Lankan government has rejected the report as "fundamentally flawed" and "based on patently biased material, which is presented without any verification".

If calls for accountability grow, observers have noted that the Indian government would probably discuss the issue privately with the Sri Lankan government. India's position on human rights has come under increasing scrutiny as New Delhi hopes to get a permanent seat in the Security Council.

Recently India, which is currently a non-permanent member on the Council, voted for the first round of sanctions against Muammar Gaddafi but it abstained on the resolution authorising use of force.

Ganguly noted that India had played a positive role in dealing with the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East but said it wasn't enough to address human rights situations in a "middle ground way".

"There are people in Tamil Nadu who also care about it (India's position on the Lankan war crimes)," she said.

fair use notice:

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka distributes this material without profit for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.